Google's campaign for a free and open internet | Hacker News Reader

Google's campaign for a free and open internet

google.com

224 pointsdiggan61 comments

Great site (and I agree with the cause), but it's pretty light on the actual info and analysis side of things. You need a good, clear hook to get people invested enough to stick around the site, granted, but there should be a page on the site with a lot more information for people that want it. Otherwise it's (partly) reducing an attempt to educate the public to asking people to sign a petition that says "evil shadowy government conspiracies to censor the web are bad".

That's super, but it's pretty obvious (I hope...) to most people that there has to be more subtlety to the situation than that, which risks alienating potential supporters, or at least gets some people saying, "well I want to find out more before I sign" and then they never come back.

On the "what's at stake" page, at the very bottom, there is a link to this related site:

https://www.whatistheitu.org/

which seems good to my eyes and has a little more information, but, more importantly, offers a list of links to major publications that have covered the issue. With those, you can pick one you might trust and learn more, if you want to. I'm not sure how closely related that site is to Google, but one obvious thing that could be added to this site is a "What is the ITU" tab in the site navigation, which could consist of that exact page.

(I'm not saying the link should be replaced. It's notable on HN that google is doing this, I just wish google's site had more information, or at least more prominent sources for more information, for those who are curious)

For other commenters that really haven't heard about what's going on with the ITU, Timothy Lee at Ars Technica covered it (Google's side, at least) pretty well a few days ago:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/11/google-rallies-op...

ICANN is in no way ideal, but shady ACTA-style agreements that would increase the ITU's power is not an acceptable solution.

I think Google is going for something which a vast majority can relate to. Making it detail oriented might give the perception that whatever this is, it only affects the techies.

That said, it should have still have details for those who fall in the category "I would like to know, but if it's not mentioned here, I am not going to do my own research".

When it says YouTube can be tolled, a detail page explaining that currently YouTube doesn't have to pay anything to the providers as consumer pays for it, and this is how it always has been, and how tolling will affect the overall web can help put things in perspective.

I doubt many people know how the internet works, and how putting barriers will affect them. Light details on how the internet works, with some scenarios on how it will affect a normal consumer will be the right mix.

Google is a weapon used by the US government to establish the domination and seize control over citizens access to information. Would Google really care about the open Internet, it'd license itself with GNU Public license long time ago. This call is hypocrisy. It is like a bank which collected all the gold is calling to the mob to rob some other bank where some other gold is. Once the other bank is robbed and cease to exist, the mob will inevitably bring the gold back to the initiator of the robbery. True freedom in the Internet is in hands of its users already. They just don't want it and give their own power to things like Google, allowing a costly layer between their needs and fulfilment. What can you do about it is another question.

> Would Google really care about the open Internet, it'd license itself with GNU Public license long time ago

I do not have a strong idea of why you think Google using the gnu licence would be strong stride in making the internet more open. What is the top technology they should GNU licence and what is the top impact it would have in opening up the internet?

How about their ranking algorithm. Wouldn't that lead to a more transparent Internet?

A more transparent internet where all the sites are abusing their knowledge of the algorithm to improve page ranking.

which would lead to a better algorythm that is less abuseable

Assuming that such an algorithm is possible.

Right, so Google keep this a secret to protect us. How is this open again?

While I wouldn't put it that way... I think it's true that Google is not a disinterested beacon of freedom. They align with it for their own purposes.

Its best to always remember this, Google was not on the side of "internet freedom" when they recommended to the FCC that wireless networks didn't need net neutrality.

This? http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/08/joint-policy-...

Please explain where Google harmed Internet freedom. Without Google and Android the mobile Internet would be 98% gated by the iOS app store and 2% mobile web running on dead-ended mobile safari with a slow JS engine.

"we both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly. In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement. "

IE, nothing about network neutrality, except telling people what you throttle/etc should apply to wireless.

It should have a * at the end of the statement that reads:

* As long as Google can track you.

(not provided)

This is good and all, but it is also important to remember they depend on the "open web" so that they will still have a place where they can show their ads. Us spending most of our time in mobile applications is not in their interest as long as it isn't on their mobile platform with their mobile apps that collects data so that the earlier mentioned ads can more efficient.

How so? Is Google requiring all your connections to go through their servers?

Are they hiding some important information from you, maybe Ghostery is not showing up in your search results? Perhaps they provide a browser that you have to use in which you cannot install Adblock, or stop it from accepting third party cookies?

You may recall Google being fined $22.5 million for sneakily bypassing Safari's privacy settings earlier this year.

But more to the point is Google's lobbying. Google spends far more on lobbying than do Apple, Facebook, or Microsoft. Google is required to report which issues they lobbied on, but not whether they are for or against proposed legislation.

In some cases we can speculate. Google reports high spending on the "Global Online Freedom Act of 2011," which would make it a crime for companies to cooperate with foreign government (cough China) censorship. I do not know which way Google lobbied on this bill, because they won't say (which is itself suggestive). But I suspect they lobbied against it, i.e. would like to be able to censor, because it seems strange to spend so much money supporting a bill that could criminalize their behavior and make it more difficult for them to grow in China. So there is a potential example of Google defending censorship when it aligns with their interest.

Overall, it's a fair guess that their lobbying efforts are for less Internet regulation, and also less consumer privacy protections, because that's where their financial interests lie.

That sort of speculation is not productive. We could just as easily speculate that Google would prefer not to censor in foreign countries and is advocating the legislation to provide them an excuse to foreign governments for their refusal to censor, and to prevent their competitors from gaining an advantage in such countries by capitulating to censorship demands and thereby putting unwanted pressure on Google to do the same.

Google was fined for violating its consent order with the FTC (established after the Buzz fiasco) in which it agreed to not lie to consumers about the extent to which they can opt out of Google's tracking.

The fine here was for lying to Safari users (Google told them they didn't need to opt out, because they couldn't be tracked, when in fact the company was tracking them).

The $22.5 million fine was _not_ for the covert tracking itself.

This is what it is written:

  A free and open world depends on a free and open web.

This is what I read:

  Google's business depends on a free and open web.

They might both be true at once. The truth of one doesn't invalidate the truth of the other.

I think we should be grateful it's on the interest of a big company like this to have a free and open internet. There won't be any real move if it's not the case or if there's no real pressure by the mass. For this second solution, it will need a lot of time and effort to educate enough people about his issue.

Maybe this is a good campaign maybe not, from the site though there's a huge problem of basically no details, references or data anywhere. How can 3 paragraphs without anything to back it up convince so many people to submit their names for something? Here's a link to one article I quickly found just looking for a perspective on this. http://www.brecorder.com/it-a-computers/206/1260960/

Anyone have others?

People rallied against SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA without knowing any details. These acronyms are all outlining pro-censorship, government-sponsored, broad-sweeping and baseless monitoring of citizens -- that much is certain.

I'd hate to sound like a rabid Ron Paul fan but he had a point in his farewell speech, "They argue that freedom must be directed and managed to achieve fairness and equality thus making it acceptable to curtail, through force, certain liberties."

Who actually sees these pages on Google? Seriously, who is the intended audience? I'm not knocking the page or the messages, I just don't understand the target? Do people browse Google? I see this stuff only via HN. I'm curious how others find it.

I got an email directly from google since I signed up from them to receive such information. I believe they collected email addresses when it was unsure weather SOPA would pass.

This is just Google running FUD campaign to protect its own business. Strong enforcement of intelectual property laws means problems to any company that indexes or hosts user generated content, but I fail to see how it could endanger free speech.

If governments can censor for a "good" purpose, they can also censor for a "bad" one. For example, the laws and technology that allow you to interrupt access to a piracy website could be used to censor any controversial content (note that many positive advances in society, such as women's voting rights, were controversial when first discussed).

So, strong enforcement of intellectual property laws means problems to... free speech and society's progress, if that involves filtering or censoring content on the internet.

I'm surprised no discussion about the topic arised in comments. Here are a few points:

- What is that close-door meeting called? Who are the participants? How does Google know about this?

- What can Google about it? (besides collecting emails)

- How come collecting lots of emails and location can 'really' help preventing so many governments from doing something? (I don't know any examples, that's why I'm asking)

- Why is Google doing this?

Surely the "evil shadowy governments" are not meeting under the explicit auspices of "curtailing internet freedom." What are the "pro" arguments for the meeting?

AIUI, the pro argument is that the Internet is international and should be controlled by an international body rather than the US government.

One of the ITU's goals is "development", meaning rich countries/companies should subsidize Internet infrastructure deployment (actually corrupt PTTs) in developing countries. The phone network already works this way, but that gravy train is coming to an end.

Another goal is "diversity/localism", meaning each country should be able to impose its own values on the Internet (e.g. the great firewalls of China, Iran, Saudi Arabia). Since this already exists, it's not clear why regulations need to be changed to allow it.

So companies can say "not our fault" when they provide services to enemies of the US/humanity.

Pretty surprised the site looks so terrible on my phone.

Wow. Some web designer didn't try resizing their browser when they designed this.

debug CSS and JS, then post a GreaseMonkey script to fix it. #freeandopen

Not on Google's mobile browsers :-(

It is not even looking right on my laptop. Google needs to hire me.

Terrible is right. And I'm viewing from my Nexus 4.

I believe our communication should have no centralized control. It should tend toward being survivable of anything, incl. people who think they are well meaning.

Here is an ITU blog post responding to press criticism on the WCIT-12 conference: http://itu4u.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/the-real-work-starts-a...

Most shallow comment... but what's the font they're using for freeandopen ?

'Open sans' apparently. http://www.google.com/webfonts/specimen/Open+Sans

Open sans is the body copy, not the hashtag text. My wild guess is something from the Droid/Droid Sans family.

Looks like a custom font based on GarageFonts' Metroflex Narrow: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/garagefonts/metroflex-narrow/ob...

The page is completely broken on desktop Safari without Flash installed. Kinda ironic: http://cl.ly/image/1M233A072M06

Leaving aside the fact that a "free and open internet" doesn't preclude plugins that receive and transmit data via the internet (the opposite, in fact), it looks fine in Safari here. It uses the HTML5 youtube player instead of the Flash one, but it does the layout just fine. Maybe you have an old version of Safari?

I'm not sure what it's about, but here's the ITU website: http://www.itu.int

did anyone else notice one of the thing they said on the what's at stake page? I think this my be their hidden motivation for doing this.

"Other proposals would require services like YouTube, Facebook, and Skype to pay new tolls in order to reach people across borders."

Yes, which makes innovation sad.

Signed up, power to the free people.

You just gave a little more power to Google.

Possibly, but this is a matter of who you trust more. Dare I say many people don't quite trust governments on doing the "right thing" for the Internet.

Unfortunately. However, to trust a company is very risky, for obvious reasons.

Can you vote in or out Google's directors?

I like the way the ITU handshaking graphic is casting a shadow over top of the world.

So I believe they mention that 42 governments apply censorship. Which are these governments??

I just added a Slant for this topic so we can collaboratively explain both sides: http://slant.co/topics/is-google-s-freeandopen-internet-camp...

nice try, google

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